Good Old-Fashioned Rivalry
by readerofasaph
Summary: Twenty things Jin and Tachikawa remember about being in high school.


1\. Jin prefers to look at the future rather than the past, but he remembers the school entrance ceremony: the cherry blossoms blowing over the incoming flock of students still deep in mourning. Orphans, survivors, victims, Border agents. He sat at the back of the assembly and saw hundreds of teenagers for the first time, and all their futures too – flashes and glimpses of the banal, the poignant, the joyful and the sad.

He too was a survivor and a mourner. At that time he had some hope for the future, but not very much. But on that morning he saw it all and couldn't understand it and thought that it was beautiful. He thought it was worth moving forward, worth fighting for.

2\. Their school had a kendo club. This, and the fact that Border HQ had threatened to dock ranking points for truancy, was the only reason Tachikawa kept his attendance up.

"Education is important," Shinoda tried to tell him.

"Of course it is, sensei," Tachikawa said cheerily. "After all, you yourself are a fine and upstanding example of this. Was that your academic transcript I found the other day, stuffed in the bottom of your filing cabinet?"

"Do as I say-" Shinoda began.

"Not as you do. Okay, okay."

3\. Jin and Tachikawa were in the same class that first year of high school.

Tachikawa was not too troublesome to teach. As long as you accepted that he was hopeless at everything and would continue to remain so no matter how much effort you put into pedagogy, there was no real trouble with him. (He'd dash out of the classroom without warning during Neighbour attacks, but that was par for the course at this school.).

Jin was a perfectly capable and cooperative student, except.

Except.

(At least for the sake of Border secrecy, he didn't say, "My side-effect tells me so." Or at least he didn't say it very often.)

4\. Kazama had to deal with Tachikawa and Jin at Border HQ. So he really didn't see why he had to be their sempai _at_ high school as well.

"Can we have a rank battle?" Tachikawa demanded at least one lunchtime a week.

"We just had a battle _last_ week. Go fight Jin again."

"But we already fought yesterday," Tachikawa would protest. "I've run out of opponents."

After about a month of being pestered Kazama ended up agreeing to regular weekly battles with Tachikawa. Just to stop the endless begging.

5\. Negotiations with Jin usually went a lot faster.

"My side-effect tells me-" Jin began.

Kazama stared very hard. "Just tell me what you want."

("How come Kazama-sempai never just says yes to my requests?" Tachikawa complained.

"Because I only make requests when my side-effect tells me it'll work," Jin shrugged.)

6\. Halfway through freshman year Tachikawa became obsessed with trying to overturn Jin's side-effect.

It didn't appear to be a healthy obsession, but since it was the first thing Tachikawa had ever shown interest in beyond waving swords around and failing at life, the other Border agents semi-encouraged this interest.

They started with games of poker. ("My side-effect tells me I'll lose," said Jin.)

Then predicting the result of a flipped coin. (Jin avoided it by saying he only saw people's futures, not objects.)

Then forecasting the result of love confessions. ("Isn't that psychology and not foresight?" Kazama objected.)

7\. It all came to an end when Jin predicted that half the freshmen would fall sick with flu that winter, which they did, and Tachikawa spent the entirety of December fuming because he wasn't allowed to use the VR room.

("Infection control," said Sawamura-san, and Kazama and Jin enjoyed a nice holiday from rank battles.

A short-lived one.)

8\. The Tachikawa-Jin competition of course was multifaceted and by no means limited to rank battles or even Trion soldier kill counts. Contests that were held over the course of their first year in high school included: rice cracker eating, number of failed pick-up lines used on girls, poker, horse-racing bets ("You tried to win against Jin in a _horse-racing bet_?" Kazama demanded incredulously), pinball machines, mountain biking, tennis, school marathons and obviously Janken.

9\. Tachikawa wanted more than anything else to fight against Jin. It's still what he wants more than anything, aside from possibly running away to a Neighbour planet to fight Black Triggers.

He's a battle junkie, and Jin was the best competition that existed. Is the best.

10\. Why Jin fights Tachikawa: it's a little hard to articulate the reasons, but if he had to put it down to one thing, it's the simple truth that life isn't lived in the past or the future, but in the present. Jin's not good with the present.

Tachikawa is.

11\. They grew up together that year, and in the years to come – Tachikawa, who's always stayed young in some vital essential way, no matter what, and Jin who was old by the time he was a child.

12\. "Because I couldn't defeat you with Kogetsu," Jin said, the white shifting blade flashing in his hands.

Tachikawa still remembers the rush of glee that surged through him the first time Jin fought with the Scorpion Trigger. It's been shadowed by everything since, but at the time it was the biggest and most famous thing Jin had ever achieved.

13\. They weren't similar and never would be; and their teachers were different too. Sly, wise Mogami of the Tamakoma Branch; steadfast and deadly Shinoda, already forming his own faction of loyal followers despite his disdain for politics.

Come to think of it Tachikawa and Jin weren't much like their teachers either. But they were more like their teachers than they were like each other.

14\. Looking back on everything, Tachikawa realises: Jin knew very early on. He _knew_.

15\. Did Jin inform Mogami Souichi of his own death? Did he try to stop it? Did he calculate every future, every fork, every plot thread, in the manner that Jin always does?

Tachikawa remembers days when Jin came to school and did not eat rice crackers. He remembers the clumsiness, the difference in his friend's movements in the rank battles. He remembers not understanding.

They've never talked together about the things that run deeper and more frightening. Jin has never liked to share, and Tachikawa has nothing to share.

16\. Tachikawa did not ask. And Jin did not tell. And so with the passing of the months Border found itself with one less leader and mentor, and one more Black Trigger.

A poor exchange. Everyone agreed on that point.

17\. Tachikawa did not mind so much about not being able to wield the Fuujin – until he learned that he would not be able to fight its owner.

18\. They stopped talking to each other so much after that. Had they ever truly spoken before? Everything they've ever said to each other has been on the battlefield, blade to blade, attack to counterattack. Jin wouldn't know where to begin talking any more than Tachikawa would.

19\. "When do we get to fight again?" Tachikawa asked at high school graduation, in a joking tone that wasn't really a joke.

20\. "My side effect tells me so," Jin replied. His smile was light and he cradled his bag of rice crackers in the crook of his arm. But he didn't answer yes or no.


End file.
